PlayStation 4 will support four controllers simultaneously

In light of the recent revelation that the Xbox One will be able to support up to eight controllers simultaneously, Sony has announced the controller limit on its own next-gen console—the PlayStation 4. According to a tweet by PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida, the PS4 will be able to support up to four controllers simultaneously.

Yoshida, however, hasn’t elaborated on Sony’s decision to keep such a low controller count. It is probably for practical reasons, since rarely have gamers actually played local multiplayer with more than three people. The closest anyone got to using all of the controller capabilities of consoles was Rock Band on the PlayStation 3, which almost hit the limit.

Only four at a time

For the sake of comparison, the current-gen Xbox 360 is able to support up to four controllers simultaneously, while the PlayStation 3 can support up to seven.

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Back in July, PlayStation 4 architect Mark Cerny had revealed that Sony had worked on quite a few prototypes for the PS4’s controller. An early prototype of the DualShock 4 controller was apparently equipped with biometric sensors. This would essentially give the controller the ability to measure things like heartbeats.

“We had a long research project where we looked at pretty much any idea we could think of,” said Cerny. “Would it help to measure the galvanic response of the skin? We tried out a tremendous number of things - and then we went to the game teams to ask them what they thought they could use from the controller.”